


Swings

by theystayalive



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Claudia Stilinski - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Harry Potter - Freeform, Sad, Stydia, Young Lydia, Young Stiles, swings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7843261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theystayalive/pseuds/theystayalive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He had never seen her smile like that before. It made his stomach jump into his throat, and for one selfish moment, he hoped that he was the only one who had ever gotten to see that smile. It made the corners of his mouth raise involuntarily. For the first time in a week."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swings

The only thing Stiles liked about the hospital was all the balloons his mom would get. This was mainly because it is common knowledge that you could do a multitude of things with balloons to entertain yourself or the people around you. To name a few, you could rub them on your head and make your hair stand up completely straight. You could draw hilarious faces on them with sharpie and then bop them around with your fists. Or (his personal favorite) you could tear a tiny opening with it and suck the helium to make your voice go about two octaves higher.

But the best part is that he could make his mother laugh with all three.

On this particular day, he was sitting next to her bed, sucking helium from a bright red balloon, talking about his day at school and having to pause to laugh at himself every few seconds. His mother was looking on with smiling eyes, happy that her child was there and real and keeping her company. 

“...And then when I was talking to Scott at lunch about the Harry Potter book I’m reading called Chamber of Secrets, Lydia leaned over to say that she read that one already last year and-”

“Lydia?” his mother inquired suddenly, “who is she? You, uh, bring her up a lot-”.

Stiles choked on the helium he was currently sucking and look at Claudia with enormous eyes. 

“What? No I don’t! I so do not, girls are gross and weird and Lydia is...Lydia is...a girl. I don’t like her or anything…”.

Claudia threw her hands up in the air defensively, “I never said you did. But last week you told me about how Lydia won the spelling bee and at lunch how she traded you your cookies for her pudding cup. Then the week before that you told me about how she pushed a boy to the ground so hard he skinned his knee because he laughed at her shoes”.

Stiles sputtered, “N-no! She just...I mean I just…” finally he hung his head in defeat, “don't tell Scott”. 

His mother laughed her warm and reassuring laugh, “Don’t worry, Stiles, I won’t. As long as you tell me all about her”.

Stiles realized that he had been beaten. He put down the balloon and took a breath, closing his eyes to picture the girl in his head. “Well, she has this really pretty, long hair. It’s not exactly red but it’s not blonde…”

“Oh that’s called strawberry-blonde,” said Claudia. 

“Right,” replied Stiles thoughtfully. 

Claudia had to suppress a smile by coughing into her hand. 

“And she has big green eyes. She’s really really smart. I know that because I used to sit next to her and she would always get perfect scores on her times tables. Or she would always finish her quiet time reading before everyone else in the whole class. And I think Mrs. Jamison noticed too because now she gives Lydia different books than all of us and they’re always big and have no pictures in them”.

Stiles looked up at his mom, “My heart gets sort of...fluttery whenever she talks to me”.

“You’ve got it bad, baby,” sighed Claudia, leaning her head back onto the pillow, “you know that’s how I knew I wanted to marry daddy. When the fluttery feeling was just always there no matter how many times I saw him every day or no matter how many dates we would go on. It was always there. And sometimes, it would get worse if he would touch my hand or kiss me-”

“Gross mom”. 

Claudia ignored him and continued, her eyes getting glassy and dazed, “But I really knew when the fluttery feeling would sometimes feel bad. Like when I knew he was going on police patrol and I couldn’t help but worry. That’s when the fluttery feeling would go into my head and it felt like I couldn’t even think properly. It would be like he was all I could ever think about and I was completely okay with that,” she looked at her son, and for a moment, he swore he saw tears in her eyes, “that’s called love kiddo. And I hope I get to watch you fall into it before-” she was abruptly interrupted by a sharp cry of pain. Her hand flew to her head and her eyes screwed shut. 

“Mom?” Stiles shot up from his stool and gripped the side of her bed, “Mom! Do I need to go get Mrs. Melissa?”

“No,” his mother forced out through gritted teeth. Finally, after a few more seconds she opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She tried to look as reassuring as possible, “No. It was just a little headache, honey. It’s gone now. Why don’t you keep telling me about your day?”

Stiles sat back onto the stool slowly, obviously unconvinced that she was okay. He didn’t feel like telling her about the rest of his day. In fact, he felt more like crying. 

He felt deflated, like the balloons he was using to change his voice with. He turned away to look back at them, their red heads bobbing up and down slightly in the breeze from the vent. His throat felt tight as he looked down at the floor and said the only thing he could think to say that wasn’t going to make him cry. “I hope I can let you meet Lydia one day, mommy”.

Her smile looked as if she was holding the weight of the world on the corners of her lips.

“I hope so too, Stiles”.

+++

She didn’t.

In fact, only about a week later, Claudia Stilinski died in that hospital room, Stiles holding her hand, the bunch of red balloons hovering right above the floor, crumpled and lifeless. 

That's how Stiles’ chest felt. Crumpled. That’s how his father’s eyes looked. Lifeless. He looked dazed and out of place. He would walk around as if he was lost in his own house. When he thought Stiles wasn't looking, he would pull out his flask and take long swigs. 

He must have thought Stiles wasn't looking a lot. 

When things would get bad, when the drinks began to affect his speech, when he would become noticeably slow and angry, or when Stiles knew that his crying would only hurt his father even more, he would leave the house. He would walk. Without any destination or place in sight. And somehow he would always end up at the playground in the back of his neighborhood. 

He would mostly find himself on the swings, probably because somehow, working to stick a perfect swing jump landing and trying to swing all the way around the chain bar did a little to take his mind off the dull ache that was constantly gnawing away in his chest. 

It was on one of these evenings, around 6 pm when he stood after another failed swing jump attempt, Stiles came face to face with Lydia Martin. 

He almost fell right back onto his butt. 

“L-lydia!”.

For some reason, his heart started beating faster at the sound of himself saying her name. 

“Hi, Stiles,” said the girl casually, switching her book to the other hand. She looked off behind his head at the swing set, “mind if I swing too?” 

Before he could answer, she walked over to the swing next to the one he had just launched from and sat down, carefully setting the book off to the side. Half-heartedly, she began pumping her legs back and forth, back and forth. Stiles was still frozen in the place he had landed. 

Lydia gave him a funny look, “Well? Are you going to swing?”

Stiles shook himself out of his stupor and trudged over to the swing, sitting down without taking his eyes off the girl. She was looking off at the sunset just beginning to sweep itself across the sky. 

“I'm glad I came when I did,” she remarked, intently studying the horizon, “I almost missed the best colors. I like it when the sky looks like it's on fire, which only really happens at this time of day," she pointed to the edge of the clouds, where it blazed a bright red. 

Stiles finally tore his eyes away from her to look at the sky. He'd barely been paying attention. He had been more focused on the way Lydia’s hair looked in the hazy light of the sun. 

“Strawberry blonde…” he said softly. 

“What?” Lydia’s head snapped around to look at him questioningly. 

“Oh uh…” Stiles’ palms suddenly got excessively sweaty, “I said uh, I like it better in summer time”. 

Her piercing green eyes kept looking at him, clearly unconvinced. Finally she seemed to just let it go and turned her attention back to the clouds above them, “Me too, I think. It's more pink during the summer”.

After another moment of pumping legs and admiring the blazing horizon, Lydia broke the silence. 

“Stiles?” she said quietly. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about your mom”.

A sharp pain shot back through his heart. But for some reason, it wasn't as sharp as the ones he felt when he was alone in his room and thought of his mother. 

“It...it's okay”.

She seemed to think for a moment, “No,” she replied, “I'm sure it's not. But that's okay. My mommy said that sometimes people like to hurt quietly. So that's okay. For now we can just look at the clouds”. 

Stiles wasn't sure how to react to that. When other people had tried to talk to him about his mom they had all told him things like “it's going to be okay” and “we’re sorry”, always with a pitiful and somewhat forced sadness. But somehow the words had always felt empty to him. How could they be sorry? Of course it would be okay for them, it wasn't their mother. 

But Lydia’s expression didn't have anything empty or forced or obligated about it. It was genuinely sad and sorry and sincere. It didn't make Stiles feel more sad like the others had. It made him feel better. 

“Is that why you come out to the swings sometimes?” she asked. 

Stiles nodded, “and when my dad is…” he couldn't finish. His father’s alcohol-fueled grief was something he felt should be kept within the Stilinski family alone. Then a thought occurred to him, “why do you come out here, Lydia?”

Lydia was quiet for a moment. Stiles could clearly see her brain trying to decide what to say next as she gently pushed herself back and forth with her toes on the ground. “I come out here to read. Sometimes my mommy and daddy are fighting too loud and I can't concentrate on my book,” she nodded down to the paperback lying just off to the side. 

It appeared she was currently reading The Order of the Phoenix. Then she looked back at Stiles and smiled, “Did you get to finish The Chamber of Secrets?”

“No not yet. Maybe that's what I’ll do when I get home. My mom loved Harry Potter. She told me the books get really good after the second one”. 

Lydia nodded, “They do. My favorite is the third one so far”. She looked back down to the book on the ground. “Do you have a picture of her?” 

Stiles surprised himself when he automatically reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded photograph, handing it to Lydia without a moments hesitation. She studied it for a long time. Her green eyes flitted over and soaked in every inch of the photograph. She studied the woman, the closed eyes and the thrown back head and the mouth frozen mid-laugh. Lydia looked up right into Stiles eyes, making his heart trip over itself. 

And for just a moment, that trip overpowered the ache.

Without looking down, she handed the photo back to Stiles, a small smile on her face.

“She’s beautiful. You have her nose,” she stated rather matter of factly, “and her smile. Especially when you laugh with Scott in class”. Then, in one swift movement, she gracefully jumped off of the swing and landed square on her feet. She turned back one last time to look at Stiles. Her expression was serious, but gentle. Sympathetic and kind. 

He had never seen her smile like that before. It made his stomach jump into his throat, and for one selfish moment, he hoped that he was the only one who had ever gotten to see that smile. It made the corners of his mouth raise involuntarily. For the first time in a week.

“I hope I get to see you smile like that again soon,” she said. 

Then she was gone, taking off across the grass, back through the playground gates, and out of sight.

Stiles watched her go. And he realized that his heart felt...fluttery. It still did. It hasn't stopped since the moment he almost knocked Lydia over after landing the swing jump. He looked back up to the sky and made up his mind. 

He never wanted her to stop making it feel that way.


End file.
